Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darfield Upperwood Primary School (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. This AfD is focused on whether the coverage is sufficient, and there does not appear to be an agreement on this issue. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 08:03, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Darfield Upperwood Primary School
AfDs for this article: 
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I'm not sure that the conclusions reached in the old AFD discussion still holds good. UK primary schools (i.e. elementary schools) are generally considered non-notable, and this doesn't seem to be a particularly exceptional case. The bulk of the article material is derived from official data and inspection reports; the "notability" argument was based on Beacon status, a passing mention in a parliamentary debate, and some local press coverage for a minor financial scandal.

"Beacon School" status was abolished years ago; moreover this applied to very many schools. The highest UK award is now to be an "OFSTED Outstanding" school, and thousands of schools fulfil this criterion. Nor does the mention of the school's name in parliament seem to hold much weight - there was no substantive discussion about the school in parliament, it was basically just namechecked. This is a common occurrence in British parliamentary debates; substantive debate about a particular school is rarer but does happen e.g. for Bishops Park College at, , (apologies that I couldn't find section links - but search the documents for "Bishops Park")

I'm not convinced the financial scandal press coverage adds much weight either. My local and regional press regularly runs stories on a similar scale e.g. recently similar amounts of money were involved in scandals relating to a financial adviser alleged to be incompetent or crooked, and a landlord using public money to provide substandard accommodation to the vulnerable. They each got a sequence of news reports over several months; occasionally stories like this get picked up for a small piece in the national media. But a "scandal" on this scale doesn't really seem encyclopedically notable; would anyone argue that the landlord or the financial adviser I mentioned, or their companies, should receive an article based on the press coverage they received? There's more to notability than a couple of non-trivial local press mentions - otherwise almost every school principal, and many long-serving school-teachers who get coverage on their retirements, would have articles here!

I'm not convinced that it's reasonable to expect us to keep up-to-date and accurate an entry about a pretty quotidian local school catering for 260 4-11 year olds. This isn't a big name school where internal changes will come to more widespread public attention (unlike British prep schools like the Dragon School which cover a similar age bracket); normally material about schools of this type and age range is covered briefly at article for the settlement covered, in this case Darfield, South Yorkshire. TheGrappler (talk) 00:23, 5 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Problems 1 What was the proportion of schools that had Beacon status--as you know, the general rule is once notable, always notable.  2 In the US, mention of something in the Congressional Record -- whether it was actually said  on the floor in Congress or added afterwards-- counts for almost nothing. I'm not sure about the status in the UK.  I'd guess a formal Question is worth mentioning, and possibly a comment from the floor much less so.   Looking at the cited page in Hansard, it was the final concluding statement in a major Government presentation, & I think worth quoting, but not by itself a proof of notability . 3 I agree the financial irregularities are relatively unimportant. Unfortunately, they are the sort  of  thing that gets into newspapers. Considering the emphasis we put on the GNG, I can understand people using them. In this case they might be right--the   references show that the inquiry became a national issue. But at the very least, I would not include the name of the principal in this context--it's undue emphasis a/c BLP.   4 The comment on maintaining standards is relevant. The text in the article about how outstanding the school is, unfortunately no longer applies, as the article's contents itself show. 5 More than I used to, I am concerned with their being suitable article for beginners to improve and to start. Secondary school articles are a good place for this, but many contributors start even earlier and have done good work in the past. If we take account how difficult an article is to maintain, a question about which I am not at all sure,  perhaps we should consider this also.     DGG ( talk ) 03:27, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks DGG - I considered asking your advice before renominating this article, but didn't save my edit on your talk page. I might have managed to make a stronger nomination if I'd consulted you first!
 * 1. We're not talking about being in the handful of top schools here. The pilot project had 75 schools, expanding to 550 schools in 2000 and to 1000+ by 2001 ... after that, I believe the scheme continued to expand.
 * 2. The parliamentary debate was about education in former coal-mining areas rather than e.g. the launch of a major new educational initiative, so even the speech wasn't all that important. I did once watch an education questions session in the British parliament; the schools minister appeared to be very peripapetic and answered questions from representatives around the House, reeling off examples of schools he'd visited in their areas and the good work they were doing! So I don't think much weight can be put on the parliamentary mention.
 * 3. I don't think the inquiry was a truly "national issue". It never went above the level of the local school board (LEA), and didn't go to court. It received cursory coverage in the national press but it wasn't a big scale issue - it was more as "here's an example of the madness of how taxpayer's money is wasted". If that's enough to pass GNG then so do many small businesses etc, see next comment.
 * 4/5. A school containing 260 under-11s is likely to be a hard article to maintain. New information e.g. Ofsted inspection, change of principal, league table position changes, changes in intake, mean that fairly regular updates would be required, in proportion to a small institution from which it's unlikely we will draw contributors. A comparable example would be e.g. a local accountancy firm with 260 customers, which once qualified for a fairly common national award, and which had a brief flirtation with financial scandal. One might be able to draft a sourced article on it, but maintenance would be very difficult. BLP considerations would also apply - as they do to this school article! - which is one reason I'm wary of keeping this, especially as it never got taken to court (this article still has a whiff of scandal and wrongdoing about it, but without the concreteness of a conviction). It seems to me that high school, popular culture, and geographic locality articles are a better bet for maintainable articles for new editors - although I am delighted you pay attention to the needs of new editors, something that we all need to learn to do more of! (I suspect there is a less "inclusionist" counterargument, that having naff, out-of-date articles may actually put potential new editors off. Doing minor corrections and updates is easier than a complete article overhaul! But I'm not sure how strong that argument is.) TheGrappler (talk) 18:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * What puts potential new editors off is having people spending an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to destroy their work. We've already had an AFD for this article and it was kept .  There is no reason for another discussion, especially an overlong trainwreck like this.  Our deletion policy states that "It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hopes of getting a different outcome."  It indicates that blocking is an appropriate counter-measure.  I endorse this sensible advice. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Since the previous nomination some years ago, a stronger consensus has emerged on notability of elementary schools. So this nomination is non-disruptive and certainly not blockworthy: it's testing how the law has changed rather than whether a different jury will give a different result. Unfortunately removing material puts off existing or previous editors, whereas including material we cannot maintain, makes us appear less trustworthy to readers (and, logically, potential editors). This is an age-old tension which defies simple solution, and the balancing act mandated by consensus can - and does - change. TheGrappler (talk) 03:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge - Primary schools should be merged into general articles about their school district in virtually all cases as a matter of generally-accepted Wikipedia policy. I think inclusionists and deletionists have reached an understanding here. This particular school does not pass my "exceptional" smell test. Carrite (talk) 15:23, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep Notability does not expire. The school has been covered in detail by independent reliable sources such as this.  We have coverage in national newspapers, educational books, &c.  There is no case for deletion because being "quotidian" is not a policy-based argument - that's just subjective WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The argument isn't that the school has become less notable and "expired", but that community consensus on the inclusion hurdle for elementary schools has hardened. OFSTED reports can't be evidence of notability: even nursery schools (kindergartens) are OFSTED-inspected - surely no-one argues they are notable? I accept we can write a verifiable article on this school, but we can write a verifiable article on a kindergarten that operated for 3 years in the 1990s, had a few dozen kids and a government inspection report. We can write and verify one on any small company that brushed with financial scandal, got press coverage, but no court case. We can certainly do one on almost any case that does get to court! We can biographize every school principal who's done interviews with the local press (i.e. pretty much all of them). And yet we don't do those things - the hurdle for having an article has always been higher than "can we write a verifiable article"? How much higher seems pretty subjective and to vary from topic to topic. Of late, a clear consensus has emerged that elementary schools are non-notable unless they are somehow exceptional. An OFSTED report clearly can't show that. Other features of this school might point towards notability (beacon status, a minor "scandal" that blew itself out), but critical consideration of those claims makes them look less exceptional.
 * That assessment is an attempt at (individually, objectively) determining whether this school meets the (community consensus, rather subjective) standard of inclusion for elementary schools. If community consensus had settled on a different standard, e.g. "elementary schools are generally notable unless they lack non-trivial secondary sources", then my assessment of the school as verifiable but quotidian wouldn't change, but my determination as to whether it passes the notability hurdle, would. TheGrappler (talk) 03:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:40, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:40, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge but merge properly. Most primary school articles on Wikipedia have little encyclopaedic information other than that they exist and a repeat of OFSTED information. This one has three claims to notability: the Beacon School award (that is the strongest); the citation by David Milliband as a good school (I know all MPs do that but this was David Milliband); and the minor story of financial irregularities. However, all of this could be condensed into a paragraph or two in the Darfield, South Yorkshire article without losing any of the encyclopaedic information. If the article stays, it needs editing to look less like a prospectus. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 09:41, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep the notability does not get lost over time, and though the Beacon School status was abolished at some point does not lower the status of it when it existed. The articles is covered in reliable third party sources and so meets the WP:GNG for inclusion. Keith D (talk) 11:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.